How Fair is NBA Schedule?

As we have 1230 NBA regular season games, do you think the games are being scheduled fairly? On the paper, it seems that some teams have easier schedules than the others; but with home stands and road trips all teams have to play 82 games in a 5.5. month time. To sum up research results, all I can speak that the further your team advances in last season’s playoff, the easier schedule will be awarded by NBA.

First of all, let’s have a look at the definitions used in this article and NBAstuffer.com

B2B: The team is playing second leg of the back to back game sets

3IN4: Te team is playing 3rd game in 4 days. Please note that this situation may not be “B2B” game every time

4IN5: The team is playing 4th game in 5 days. Count it as a “B2B” game but arguably the toughest situation a team may have.

1: The team have rested 1 day

2: The team have rested 2 days

3: The team have rested 3 or more days

In the tables given below; I’ve had San Antonio and Cleveland in yellow.

When we look at the “total days off” table it’s understood that NBA allowed all teams a total ’70-79′ days rest. In professional sports, especially in basketball, what matters much is how frequent the teams have rest than how many days they do rest totally. The “total days off” sounds fishy; it makes people think there is a fairly setted schedule out there, but schedule researchs have made the subject clear: Some of the teams have been a little bit blessed by NBA.